The Evolution of “Rumor”

摘要

Rumor is a social phenomenon and its true colors are similar to those of “folk commentaries”, including “folk songs”, “nursery rhymes”, “folk cus-toms”, “ballads”, “new rhymes”, “village ballads”, “chanting ballads” and so on. It is also an important monitoring system in ancient China. With the development of society, “rumor” has changed its semantic meaning. In modern Chinese, “rumor” has become an unreliable, deceptive and derog-atory term. This article is to investigate the evolution of rumors and its re-lationship with hearsay, so as to correctly distinguish the uses of two dif-ferent forms in real life so as to curb rumors, and foreground the positive role of “hearsay” in the monitoring system.